Is the term SciFi still derogatory?

I was asked today why I use the term SciFi--as in my posts about SciFi Strange--when "most" people in the science fiction community find the term derogatory. That was a bit of a shocker to me. I mean, I understand the history of all this. That SciFi was once used to put down the genre for perceived low-quality and cliched literature, and that's why many writers and others use the shorthand of SF. But to me, that's an ancient battle which is over and done.

I personally like the term and use it quite a bit. I also like the term SF, but that lends itself to an imprecise meaning since SF can also refer to speculative fiction. When I want to specifically reference science fiction, I use SciFi.

I also believe SciFi works better as a marketing tool than SF, as demonstrated by the success of the SciFi Essentials book program. In fact, that's why the SciFi Channel's much mocked move into Syfy land was so wrong-headed. Their original name resonated because people immediately understood it. It's also why readers responded to the SciFi Essentials book program. Readers weren't buying those books merely because they were slapped with the logo of a cable channel--readers responded to the books being labeled as essential science fiction reading.

Am I wrong here?

UPDATE: It appears I am wrong. A number of people contacted me via Twitter or email to say that they either dislike SciFi or avoid its use because it ticks people off. Most of this later group said they personally saw nothing wrong with the term, but wanted to avoid making people mad. One person even warned me that my use of the term would mark me as an outsider to the genre. Right. Nevermind that I've read almost every science fiction novel out there, have been reading in the genre since age 10, and love the genre to death.

My view is there's nothing wrong with the term SciFi, especially since the general public uses it. People in the science fiction community continually talk about how they want to bring in new readers to the genre. Well, one way to do that is to use a term which resonates with the general public. Just my 2 cents worth.

UPDATE 2: Many thanks to K. Tempest Bradford for writing about this. And if the Crotchety Old Fan's comments on the SF/SciFi Generation Gap can't bring a smile to your face, you take life far too seriously.

Response to Jeff VanderMeer on SciFi Strange

Jeff Vandermeer comments on my noticing of SciFi Strange. Basically, he's not convinced there's anything to SciFi Strange and that my description of this type of science fiction lacks "an understanding of how style and texture help determine the weirdness of a story." He specifically mentions this in relation to my story "The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain," saying "There’s nothing strange about Sanford’s story on a style level--theindividual paragraphs are, if anything, straightforward, invisible, serviceable, and a little bit mundane. (The story’s better than the style used to tell it, but I still didn’t find it at all strange.)"

I should note that Jeff isn't mocking SciFi Strange. He's simply kicking the tires--seeing if there's anything to this, which is a fair question, especially from one of the leading supporters of the New Weird. On the issue of style and texture, the SciFi Strange stories I've noticed and loved are, by and large, not an attempt to be avant-garde simply for the sake of literary pretentiousness. This isn't to say they don't employ a literary style of writing (they do), or experiment with language where dictated by the story (they sometimes do). But stylistic mannerisms simply aren't the sole focus of SciFi Strange.

To me, the New Weird is similar to SF's New Wave movement from decades ago--both movements revitalized and opened new frontiers on how language could be used in genre storytelling. But while fantasy and horror only recently began coping with these issues through the New Weird, these battles were long ago fought in the SF genre. Writers of SciFi Strange don't have to prove themselves by writing avant-garde prose, and only use such a style if the story demands it.

For example, Nnedi Okorafor's story "From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7" is as post-modern and experimental as any fiction out there. It's also a great example of SciFi Strange. Eugie Foster's "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" is another SciFi Strange story where an experimental storytelling approach is needed, and pays off. But not all SciFi Strange stories use such experimental styles. Ted Chiang and Paolo Bacigalupi write lyrical stories, but rarely employ avant-garde prose. As for Jeff's mention of my story, it is not an experimental story from a stylistic point of view. Instead, the story demanded an ordinary style of prose so the strangeness of the story's worldview could be felt more intensely by the reader.

What makes SciFi Strange "strange" isn't necessarily the style of writing. Instead, it's the focus of the writing. It's how these authors explore today's rapidly changing multicultural world and the basic human values and needs which bind us together. And at the heart of these stories is the basic strangeness, the basic uniqueness, the wide-eyed "gee-whiz" wonder and/or sense of horror which the golden age of SF displayed when it knocked upon the doors of reality back in the '40s and '50s. Except now this sense of awe is being told with the full range of writing styles and cultural understandings embraced by the New Wave movement of the '70s. And where golden age SF writers dealt with a worldview which was white-bread and analog, SciFi Strange deals with an every-changing scientific understanding of life and the universe--an understanding which is unnervingly close to being philosophical in nature.

I'm not sure if any of this addresses Jeff's concerns. I trust he'll let me know if it didn't. But I do agree with a point he made--SciFi Strange as a movement or subgenre or whatever you call it only exists if writers and readers are the driving force behind these types of stories. If they start identifying stories as SciFi Strange, it will exist. If they don't, then the term is simply the rambling of this writer's fiction-addled brain.

Cover of new Interzone, featuring my novella

IZ224coversm The new issue of Interzone, featuring my novella "Sublimation Angels," will be published September 10. TTA Press has released the cover, which is stunning as always. I mean, damn, if there's a more beautiful SF magazine than Interzone, I haven't seen it. Click the image to see the full-size cover. I should also note that my novella has no relation to that beautiful art--the world in my story is as far from green and warm as humanity will ever get.

Issue 224 (Sept./Oct. 2009) also features stories by Jeremiah Tolbert, Adrian Joyce, Katherine Sparrow and Rachel Swirsky, and Chris Butler.

The noticing of my noticing of SciFi Strange

Since my original post about how I noticed a new trend in SF I named SciFi Strange, others have chimed in with their views on this. Among the comments:

I could go on. Obviously there is something to this whole SciFi Strange idea. It'll be interesting to see where all this goes.

The Noticing of SciFi Strange

Note: Below is my original essay on SciFi Strange. I've also arranged the following links for anyone wanting more information and resources on this emerging subgenre.

Original Essay:

I hate manifestos. They sound so pretentious, and often strike me as merely an ego trip for the manifestor. Sort of an "I'm so important whatever I say goes for everyone from this point on." Please. So don't call this a manifesto. Instead, it is the noticing of a trend.

Today on Twitter, British science fiction author Gareth L. Powell asked, "We've had New Weird and Steampunk. What's going to be the 'next big thing' in science fiction?"

What's the next big thing? I think it's already here. We simply don't have a name for it.

I've actually been thinking about this topic for a few months, ever since reading the introduction David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer wrote for my short story "The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain" in their Year's Best SF 14. They said of my story, "If there is such a thing as new weird SF, this is it."

That set me to thinking. Why do I write stories like this? Why do I react so positively to certain types of SF, while other types leave me cold. The SF stories I love are by authors like Ted Chiang, Paolo Bacigalupi, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor, to name only a few. As I reflected on the term new weird SF, I realized this label covered all the authors and stories I loved. Except new weird SF simply doesn't work as a name. It sounds too much like a rip-off of the New Weird.

Perhaps we should call this trend SciFi Strange.

Like SF's earlier New Wave movement, there is a lot of experimentation with SciFi Strange, along with high literary standards. But where New Wave stories focused excessively on sexual expression and the drug-influenced residue of the 1960s, SciFi Strange simply accepts the different viewpoints which were once so shocking and novel to the '60s generation. In addition, SciFi Strange writers live in today's multicultural world, where diversity and difference are the norm, even as we explore the basic human values and needs which bind all of us together.

SciFi Strange also flirts with the boundaries of what is scientifically--and therefore realistically--possible, without being bounded by the rigid frames of the world as we know it today. But don't mistake SciFi Strange for fantasy. This is pure science fiction. It's merely an updated version of the literature of ideas. A SF equipped for a world where the frontiers of scientific possibility are almost philosophical in nature.

Examples of SciFi Strange include Gareth L. Powell's "Ack-Ack Macaque," Eugie Foster's "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast," Daryl Gregory's "Second Person, Present Tense," Aliette de Bodard's "Butterfly, Falling at Dawn" (along with many other stories), Mercurio D. Rivera's "The Scent of Their Arrival," and most of the stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, Ted Chiang, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor. In fact, I would rate Ted Chiang as the father of SciFi Strange. I know his amazing short stories have truly influenced me.

It is also worth noting that the writers of SciFi Strange appear quite frequently in the magazine Interzone and the webzines Clarkesworld and Strange Horizons.

Am I merely shooting off at the mouth with this? I hope not. SciFi Strange is what I see happening around me. This is the type of SF which truly excites me these days. It will be interesting to see if anyone else agrees.

Seeking input on online SF/F/H magazines

In a few weeks I'll be leading a discussion titled "Online Genre Magazines: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" at the Context SF Convention. As I prepare for this, I'd like to hear from editors and readers about their reactions to the different online genre magazines. In particular, if you want me to consider adding your online magazine to my analysis, let me know about it by dropping me an email.

A few points. First, I plan on reprinting this analysis online after the convention, so it will be seen by a number of people. Second, all of the genre magazines in the notable stories list for the Million Writers Award will be in my analysis b/c I'm familiar with them through my work running the award. Third, my analysis will focus on detailing three aspects of each genre magazine: quality of content, quality of editorial work, and quality of site design. I'll also mention which are SFWA professional markets and maybe one or two other items, but my main focus will be alerting writers to those online genre magazines which provide the best exposure for their work.

Email or tweet me your ideas and suggestions.

Story accepted in OCHO, the print companion to MiPOesias

My experimental story "Cwazy," which combines fantasy and Southern literature, will be published in an upcoming short fiction edition of OCHO, the print companion to the well-known literary and arts magazine MiPOesias. This special issue is edited by Kirk Curnutt and will feature authors such as Josh Russell, Elise Blackwell, Michael Griffith, Jim Murphy, David Racine, Marlin Barton, Dana Coester, Jim Gilbert ... and others, including me!

Look for this issue of OCHO in the fall.

How long does it take F&SF to reject me? Seven Days!

We now have the answer to one of the great riddles of the ages: How long does it take F&SF to reject my most recent submission? In this case, 7 days.

I mailed the submission on July 27 and received the rejection today, for a grand total of 7 days. It was an "alas" rejection from Gordon Van Gelder, which was actually dated on July 31. This was well under their average response time of 12 days, per their Duotrope listing. Talk about speed.

There was one outright winner, who will receive a copy of David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer's anthology Year's Best SF 14 (which includes my Interzone story "The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain"). This winner picked 8 days. There were also four people who picked 9 days. I'll throw their names in a hat and draw the final two names to receive copies of the book.

As for all those who picked 10 days and up, I guess you were being too kind. And before people feel too sorry for me, I also received a very nice acceptance today for a different story. Once the editor says its okay to announce the details, I'll spill the complete beans.

Thanks to everyone for taking part. I'll mail the books in the coming days.

The Great "How Fast Does Jason Get Rejected by F&SF?" Contest

I have three copies to give away of David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer's anthology Year's Best SF 14, which includes my Interzone story "The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain." So let's do a little contest; the three winners all receive free copies of the book.

Here's the deal: In the next few days, I will be submitting a new story to Fantasy and Science Fiction. As most writers already know, F&SF processes submitted stories in a very fast manner. This isn't a complaint against the magazine--the simple truth is editor Gordon Van Gelder and assistant editor John Joseph Adams (aka Slushgod, who is the first reader for the slush pile) work extremely hard to respond to all submissions in a prompt manner. As a writer, I appreciate this.

So the contest will be guessing how many days it takes for my story to be rejected. For an idea on F&SF's submission response times, check out their Duotrope Digest listing. The date range will be based on how long it takes from mailing the submission to when the rejection arrives in my mailbox. My previous three submissions to F&SF had a rejection time of 7 days, 12 days, and 21 days, as listed in my Duotrope submission tracker.

The three people who guess closest each win a book. If by some unlikely chance the story is accepted, I'll throw all the entered names into a hat and draw the winners. And if more than three people pick the same winning day, the hat will also be used to pick the winners from among those people.

If you want to track the contest, you can follow my submission progress at twitter.com/jasonsanford. To enter, email me your name and rejection guess to lapthai (at sign) yahoo (dot) com. And please make sure you have a snail mail address I can send the book to. And yes, anyone anywhere in the world is welcome to enter.

Three of my stories, free for the reading

I finally got off my butt and created PDFs of my three SF stories published last year in Interzone and Analog so people can read them online. The stories, with promotional notes, are:

Thanks for all the support everyone has given my stories!

Art for my upcoming novella "Sublimation Angels"

Pdrummond_43_large Artist Paul Drummond, who frequently illustrates stories for the British SF magazine Interzone,has posted on his website the art for my upcoming novella "Sublimation Angels." The novella will appear in the next issue of Interzone (issue 224, Sept./Oct. 2009).

Drummond is a great hard SF artist; you can see more of his Interzone work here. Even better, subscribe to Interzone, because it is simply the best SF/F magazine around.

Several suggestions for Nebula Awards

Last night I submitted a few works as "suggested reading" for the Nebula Award, which under the new rules is the quasi-unofficial first step in the award process. My initial suggestions are:

  • "The Art of the Dragon" by Sean McMullen (F&SF, Aug-Sept. 2009)
  • "The Shangri-La Affair" by Lavie Tidhar (Strange Horizons, Jan. 2009)
  • "The Radio Magician" by James Van Pelt (Realms of Fantasy, Feb. 2009)

I'll no doubt have more suggestions as the year goes on. I also regret that I can't suggest several stories from Interzone, but the SFWA rules specifically forbid that since Interzone is a British magazine. Anyway, the official nomination period for the Nebulas opens on November 15. Any story I list on my blog as suggested reading will definitely be among my official nominations.

Interzone to publish my story "Plague Birds"

Great news: The British SF magazine Interzone has accepted a new story of mine titled "Plague Birds." In addition, my 20,000-word novella "Sublimation Angels" will appear in the next issue of Interzone (issue 224, Sept./Oct. 2009). As always, thanks to Andy Cox and all the Interzone editors for the wonderful support they have given my writings.

My koan for the day: Can you joke about the riddle of "Hint Fiction"?

I love jokes, especially when they play off a deeper truth. Riddles drive me crazy because I always miss the obvious--but then so do most people. Koans show so wonderfully why reason is rarely a path to enlightenment.

Now comes the Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction, which will shortly be accepting submissions. What is hint fiction? As the anthology guidelines state, "It's a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story. The thesis of the anthology is to prove that a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer." Robert Swartwood coined the term in this essay, where he explains that longer fictional formats like flash fiction--or heaven forbid, an actual short story--are simply to painful to be read by modern men and women, who evidently suffer from epidemic amounts of ADD.

And so we have hint fiction. 25 words or less.

My attitude to Swartwood's hint fiction--more power to him. I hope writers submit to the anthology, which pays at the astoundingly high rate of a $1 per word. But let's not pretend that hint fiction is anything new. The genre is merely a new term for the millennia old storytelling forms of riddles, jokes, and koans.

I'm sure some people will get their cackles up at that; after all, I've said similar things before about flash fiction, (although I should note that I've also praised certain examples of flash fiction for being very good stories). But the simple truth is that storytelling comes in all shapes and sizes, with riddles, jokes, and koans being examples of extremely short format stories. It's also possible for the best riddles, jokes, and koans to endure much longer than the long format stories and novels we're all familiar with. For example, the koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" evidently comes from 16th century Japan. How many of today's novels and short stories will survive another 500 years?

So yes, hint fiction is a legitimate fictional genre. Enjoy submitting to and reading Swartwood's anthology. But please, people, don't pretend hint fiction is anything more than an upscale rebranding of riddles, jokes, and koans.

Examiner.com takes on the world (and Austin, Texas)

Wonder what the implosion of daily newspapers means for local news coverage? Well, one hint of what's to come is Examiner.com, which bills itself as the "Insider source for everything local." Already covering more than 90 cities around the U.S., Examiner.com is a perfect example of how citizen journalism could easily replace the top-down journalism model we're all familiar with.

My friend Jessica Schneider works for the Examiner.com as their Austin Cultural Events Examiner. Anyone from that part of Texas looking for unique and different things to do should check out her page. If you know of any Austin-area events and shindigs you want to spread the word about, simply drop her a line.

Literary liar James Frey dips toes into SF for big money payout

So well-known literary liar James Frey (of A Million Little Pieces infamy) hooks up with a new writer and creates a young adult series of SF books. However, instead of pulling his own weight, Frey gets the new writer, Jobie Hughes, to actually do most of the writing for the series, the first of which is titled I Am Number Four. The premise: A group of alien teenagers "hide on earth after their planet is attacked by hostile invaders." Wow. Original.

Naturally the large publishing houses which aided and abetted Frey's previous lies scoop up the new series, and immediately sell it to Hollywood. Michael Bay, the director of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is signed on to produce and possibly direct the first installment. For those of you who aren't sure of the talent swirling around all this, here's Nick Mamatas' recent review of the new Bay film.

Think this is all a joke? Here's the NY Times article.

Perhaps Jobie Hughes is a great writer and storyteller, in which case I wish him the best with the series. But from where I sit, this deal stinks worse than most of Michael Bay's films.

Sneak peak at Tesseracts Thirteen

T-13_cover270 Tesseracts, the famed anthology series of Canadian speculative fiction, returns with Tesseracts Thirteen: Chilling Tales from the Great White North. Where last year's anthology focused on novella-length SF and fantasy, this year's collection is solid Canuck horror.

An advanced reading copy arrived in the mail today and so far I'm really impressed. Edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrel, the collection includes a large number of original stories by authors such as Kelley Armstrong, Alison Baird, Daniel Sernine, and many more. The first story I read is an amazing tale: "Lost in a Field of Paper Flowers" by Gord Rollo. This story will likely make many of the year's best lists, and left me wanting to keep reading the book.

Tesseracts Thirteen hits bookstores in the middle of September. Until then, here's my review of last year's edition.

Support Tim Pratt and his serial story idea

SF/F writer Tim Pratt's wife was laid off yesterday. As he details on his Livejournal page, he and his wife are searching for freelance work to both keep a roof over their heads and pay their son's medical bills (so if you know of anyone needing a talented freelancer, contact him).

Tim also says he is "toying with the idea of writing a Marla Mason prequel novella/shortnovel, about her early days as a sorcerer. Would any of you be interested in a donation-driven serial approach, with me posting a chapter a week free online, and soliciting whatever people want to pay? And possibly selling a hard copy/e-book through Lulu.com or something when it's done?"

I'd totally support that. Help convince Pratt to write this story by going to his Livejournal page and making a pledge.

UPDATE: Tim is now writing the serial story. As Tim explains, "Bone Shop tells the story of Marla's evolution from runaway to sorcerer's apprentice to mercenary magician and beyond. Fans of the urban fantasy series that began with Blood Engines will find surprising secrets revealed about Marla's past, and new readers can meet the character from the very beginning." To read the story, go here. The first chapter will be posted June 29. Be sure to hit the donate button on that page.